He slung the bow over his back and dropped the arrow into the quiver. Then he reached out with a muscular, tattooed arm.
X shook his forearm in the Cazador way.
Isaiah smiled. “Welcome to the Angry Tuna,” he said. His smile was surprisingly white.
“You know why we’re here,” Rhino said, “so I’ll get down to business. I’m going to kill Colonel Vargas, and I need your help.”
Mac pulled out a bag of coins and shook it.
Isaiah’s green eyes flitted to Mac.
“You bring more?” he asked.
Mac nodded.
“How much?”
“What you asked for this morning,” Mac said.
Isaiah smirked. “Unfortunately for you, I changed my mind this afternoon. I’m going to need double your offer if you want my help.” Turning, he waved his arm around them. “As you can see, I need a new boat.”
“I told you he was greedy,” Mac said to Rhino.
“Actually I blame the sky people,” Isaiah said with a snort. “Mr. Tomás Mata sent his goons out earlier this evening. Said he is raising prices on his fleet because of the battle that sank some of his trawlers, and I’m already behind on payment.”
“Double it is then,” Rhino said, “but you get half now, and half when the job is done. That work for you?”
Isaiah walked closer to X, scratching the stubble on his chin.
“I want to do two things before I make my decision,” he said. “First, I want to have a good look at the king.”
The Cazador soldier turned fisherman circled X, looking him up and down.
“You got the scars,” Isaiah said, “and the reputation. But are you really immortal? That is the question.”
“I’m just a man with a killer instinct and a high pain tolerance,” X said.
“Perhaps a man with a lot of luck, too,” Isaiah said, halting before X. “So tell me your brilliant plan to kill Vargas. His Praetorian Guards are seasoned warriors. They won’t be easy to sneak up on.”
“We infiltrate Elysium tomorrow night after Felipe here provides a distraction during dinner,” Rhino said. “As soon as Vargas retreats to his quarters, we take him down in a dark passage.”
“Isn’t that how someone tried to kill you?” X asked.
“Yes,” said Rhino. “Lucky for me, Wendig had my back.”
“Well, she doesn’t now, does she?” Isaiah said.
X didn’t like Isaiah talking about Wendig. She had been a peerless warrior and deserved to be honored, not disrespected.
“No, but I do,” X said.
Isaiah frowned, unimpressed. “You’re talking about sneaking onto a ship with hundreds of warriors aboard,” he said. “How do you expect to get away without being seen?”
“They’re mostly just recruits,” Rhino said. “You saw them with your own eyes, and Felipe is going to create a distraction among the youngsters, then sneak away to help us. Besides, Vargas hardly ever leaves the warship, and when he does, he brings a whole entourage of guards.”
“Wait a minute,” Mac said. “Remember what I told you at the trading post?”
Rhino shook his head. “Which part?”
“Vargas patronizes the brothels regularly, and I know the owners. Maybe I could set something up where we don’t have to sneak onto Elysium at all.”
“That would be better,” X said. “Way fewer threats on the trading rig.”
Isaiah ran a hand over the chipped paint on the bulkhead.
X could still make out “Atún,” but the other word was too faded to read.
“How many of us will there be?” Isaiah asked, still looking at the letters.
“Us, minus Xavier,” Rhino said.
Isaiah’s smile dried up. “I’ll do it for the agreed price, but only if he comes too,” he said. “I don’t trust a man who pays others to do the risky stuff.”
X looked at Rhino, who shook his head.
“No way,” Rhino said.
“Not so fast,” X said. “Count me in. It’s been a while since I had a good fight.”
* * * * *
An hour had passed since the Sirens took wing and headed out to sea. None had returned. Discovery had blown them all back to hell.
With that threat gone, Magnolia and the Cazador team pushed down the rocky shore, battling hard wind as they looked for a way into the city. Acid rain streaked down her visor.
She brushed it away, scanning the cliffs. A Cazador scout team had already tried to climb up in several spots, but the bluffs were too steep and crumbling.
The tsunami of two and a half centuries ago had created the natural barrier around the city, making it as impregnable as an old-world castle. Since then, the tide had eaten into the ribbon of shoreline left behind, narrowing the space between the water and the earthen walls.
And the tide was starting to rise again.
For now, the team was safe on the rocky, debris-strewn beach, but the clock was ticking. Magnolia stayed back from the encroaching waves and close to the bluffs that rose a hundred feet above them.
“Mags, take a look at this,” Rodger said, pointing at a bone that stuck out of the wall. “Is it human?”
She nodded, spotting most of a skull in the rubble. Intermingled with the bones jutting out of the layers of earth, concrete, and rock were oxidized copper pipes and wrought iron, and twisted hooks of rebar. The raw ends were all potentially lethal hazards if any should snag her suit. It made climbing and falling all the more dangerous. They pushed farther down the shore, stepping over driftwood, the roof of a buried vehicle, and a flaking rusty hubcap.
Around the next corner, she finally saw a spot that looked promising. The hundred-foot bluff had partially collapsed, leaving a slope of debris that cut the vertical exposure by half. It certainly looked better than the vertical cliffs, but the jagged and unstable hunks of concrete and metal would still make it dicey.
Lieutenant Alejo was already talking to the scouts with ropes and other climbing gear. They set off while the rest of the Cazadores formed a perimeter, rifles and machine guns up.
“If there is a way up, they will find it,” Alejo said to Magnolia.
She kept against the rock wall while they went to work. The drizzling rain flecked her wrist computer as she checked Team Raptor’s progress. Their beacons again showed slow but steady movement. Since the male Sirens flocked out of the city, they had gone nearly three miles from their drop zone. If she had to guess, Captain Mitchells or Timothy had used a decoy to help them get away from a hive of the beasts.
It must have worked, because all five Raptor beacons were still active.
Rodger bent down beside her. “How are they doing?” he asked.
“Good, I think,” she replied. “They’re moving along like nobody’s hurt bad.”
Lightning illuminated the two Cazador climbers. They practically scampered up the crumbly surface. Halfway up the slope, the men reached the first vertical slab of concrete. They threw a rope with a grappling hook over the top.
The crashing waves grew louder, bringing Magnolia to her feet. Ten-footers slapped down on the rocky shore, sending frothy ripples ever closer to the cliffs.
Magnolia gripped her laser rifle and scanned the ocean with her optics, leery of sea monsters that might use the opportunity to ride a wave in and snatch an unwary Cazador. She wiped her visor clean again and slowly scanned the water, finding nothing bigger than a shoal of fingerlings darting en masse this way and that.
Something larger was out there prowling, though. She had seen it on sonar on the way in. And she couldn’t shed the feeling they were being watched from the bluffs.
A voice called out from above. She backed away from the cliff and aimed her rifle at two Cazador helmets looking down. Three ropes snaked over the side and down to the ground.
�
�I told you,” Alejo said, grabbing one and offering it to Magnolia. “Would you like to go first?”
“I will,” Rodger said. “Let me check it out first, Mags.”
A Cazador started climbing each of the other two ropes, and Rodger took the third. He tried pulling himself up hand over hand, walking his feet up the slab, but his boots skidded down the rock right away.
“Careful,” she said.
He tried again, this time grasping the rope between his ankles, and shinnied upward.
Behind them, the tide kept coming, each new wave sliding farther and farther inland. Magnolia turned back to the water, holding rear guard with the laser rifle.
This time, she saw something under the surface about three hundred meters out. A dorsal fin cut through the water.
She backed away, nearly tripping over a partly exposed iron block that had once been a car engine. Screaming rang out above her as she staggered to regain her balance.
A heavy thump followed, and when she looked over, a Cazador lay at the foot of the cliff. The last few yards of the rope he had been climbing slithered down on top of him.
Normally, such a fall would have killed a man, but the armor had protected him to a degree. Magnolia rushed over.
Rodger had paused two-thirds of the way up, and so had the Cazador on the other remaining rope.
“Keep climbing!” Magnolia shouted.
“¡Sigan!” Alejo yelled.
The man who had fallen lay moaning on the ground. One leg pointed in the wrong direction, and his helmet had cracked open on a rock. Blood leaked onto the wet soil.
Alejo crouched, talking in a hushed voice and holding the soldier’s hand. Then he looked up at General Santiago, who unsheathed his sword and plunged it into the fallen man’s heart.
They dragged his body over to the cliff, out of sight from above.
Magnolia glanced up to the top of the wall, but the Cazador scouts were out of sight. They were going to get a good reaming for not anchoring the rope securely.
Rodger and the Cazador on the other rope made it over the edge, and Magnolia checked the ocean again before slinging her rifle. The large life-form had gone back under, and she didn’t see a reading on her visor.
The encroaching surf lapped nearly to her boots. Turning to the wall, she grabbed the rope.
You got this, Mags.
As she inchwormed her way up the cliff, she tried to make out voices over the waves assaulting the shore. All she could determine was that their speech seemed frantic and faster than normal.
Electricity arced across the skyline, lighting up the swollen, dark clouds. They were moving in fast, dumping more acid rain on the toxic land.
Halfway up the wall, Magnolia looked down at General Santiago. Still banged up from the fight with the oil serpents back at the fuel station, he climbed slowly. He would get to the top, though, she had no doubt.
Below her, the surf lapped around the body of the fallen Cazador. When she looked again, the waves had lifted the body and slapped it against the wall. The crunch of armor against the rock spurred her on, as if she needed an incentive to avoid the Cazador’s fate.
As she neared the top, Rodger reached down to grab her by the armor. She scrambled over the ledge and followed him to a brick wall.
Several Cazadores huddled around a helmet on the ground, but she didn’t see a body. The rest of the soldiers had fanned out, pointing weapons out at the black terrain and the fog masking much of the city.
Rodger motioned for her to follow him over to the stacked slabs of a collapsed parking structure. Lieutenant Alejo crouched there, talking to several of his men. One of them held up a frayed end of rope.
The pieces of the puzzle started coming together.
Their rope hadn’t snapped or come untied. It was slashed, and whoever did it had taken the two scouts into the fog.
She unslung her rifle and brought it up, scanning the wastes. Behind the ruined structures and sunken streets, the purple and red flora pulsated, adding its glow to the wrecked cityscape. But there was no sign of any living creatures out there, nothing moving or howling in the silences between thunderclaps.
But for the bloody helmet a few feet away, she might have thought the two scouts had vanished into thin air. Whatever monster had taken them was long gone now, leaving behind no spoor of blood or tracks other than the helmet.
Rodger was lucky he hadn’t fallen to his death too. She patted him on the shoulder as they looked out over the city. Storm clouds rolled in over the fog-shrouded devastation, and with the clouds came a dazzling display of lightning.
Alejo crouch-walked over to Magnolia and handed her the frayed rope.
“It’s happening again,” he said.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Cazadores are being hunted.”
TWENTY-TWO
The wind howled outside the abandoned factory. The toxic monsoon pounded the roof, and lightning cracked in all directions. Water dripped from a hole in the ceiling to form a growing puddle behind a metal desk.
Traveling now was too dangerous, and Michael had ordered his team to find shelter until it let up. Outside the dark room, Edgar and Alexander stood sentry on the mezzanine. The other divers used the time to check their gear and study their digital maps. According to Michael’s wrist monitor, Cricket was off the grid, which meant it had either perished at the hands of the Sirens or was simply too far out to get a signal.
He prayed it was the latter.
The robot had become like a friend, if such a thing was possible, and it had saved their lives at the sinkhole. Some quick thinking by Captain Mitchells and Timothy had also helped, but Michael feared it had meant the end for poor Cricket.
“We’re pretty close to the target,” Sofia said. She took a seat on an I-beam next to Michael. Arlo joined them. His hands were shaking. He shoved them in his pockets, but Michael already knew how scared the young diver was.
“Magnolia and her team are hunkering down, too,” Michael said. He punched his cracked wrist computer screen, bringing up their location. “Still three miles to our south.”
Sofia looked at the ceiling.
Michael couldn’t help feeling that they were wasting time, but going outside in the driving rain was an even greater risk than the lightning. Moving over to a shuttered window, he squatted down to look through a crack in the iron hatch that someone had installed after the war. The brass casings and the bullet holes in the walls led him to believe that people had used this place as a hiding spot centuries ago.
Michael wondered whether it had worked, and who or what the people were shooting at. Other humans? Monsters?
Defectors …
Michael felt his throat tighten at the memory of the last ambush. He had promised himself he wouldn’t dwell on the tragedy in Jamaica and instead use Trey’s death as motivation to save others. He wouldn’t let his friend die for nothing.
Moving to the side, Michael looked through a different crack. Water cascaded down the sloped street, riffling past the hulls of vehicles still parked outside. The rubber tires were gone, and the plastic components brittle and broken. All that remained were iron engine blocks, rusted body metal, and some glass.
Thunder boomed in the distance.
“Reminds me of my birth,” said Arlo.
He stepped up next to Michael. “Thunder sounds like a badass nickname, right? Well, it’s not.”
Michael let the kid talk—it would help with his nerves after he nearly ended up Siren food.
“Kids used to make fun of me when I was younger, but they didn’t know the story,” Arlo continued. “I was born during a storm, but I wasn’t breathing when I arrived in this dark world. My dad gave me mouth-to-mouth, and for nine minutes, Dr. Huff said, I didn’t breathe.”
Arlo clapped his hands together.
“Qui
et!” Michael snapped.
“Sorry,” Arlo whispered. “I was trying to describe the thunder. When it clapped outside the airship, I gasped for air and saw my parents for the first time. That’s why they called me Thunder.”
“Cool story,” Sofia said. “I’m still pissed at you for clipping me on the dive.”
“I’m sorry,” Arlo said.
“Do something like that again, and you won’t be having any more fun with your lady friends, if you know what I mean.”
Arlo hesitated and then looked to Michael.
“I’m sorry to you too, Commander Everhart,” he said.
“You’re forgiven,” Michael said. “Just don’t go pulling any more stupid shit.”
“That’s a promise.”
“Commander,” said a new voice.
Michael looked to the open doorway, where Edgar stood with rifle cradled.
“We found something you might want to check out,” he said.
“Stay put,” Michael said to Sofia and Arlo.
After leaving the two new boots in the office, he took the stairwell down to the first floor. Alexander was waiting there and led them across the factory floor. They stopped at a door to a bathroom, and Edgar pushed it open.
“Found some sort of maze,” he said, shining his light inside.
Michael clicked on his beam and went into the bathroom. Broken tiles were strewn over the floor, and a row of sinks had collapsed. Cracked mirrors hung on the wall, their surfaces covered in gray-green moss.
He followed Alexander around a corner to the showers, and a hole in the center of the floor. The tile and concrete had been broken away, opening into an old sewer line.
“This is probably where the survivors fled to,” he said, bending down. They shined their lights down a narrow passage littered with glass bottles, cans, and galvanized buckets.
“Want to see where it goes?” Edgar asked.
Hearing voices behind them, they found Sofia and Arlo at the entrance to the bathroom.
“I thought I said stay put,” Michael said, trying to keep his voice low.
“I’m sorry, Commander,” Sofia said, “but that growling we heard back at the sinkhole—it’s back.”
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